


Requiem for a Cowboy

by LedByTHeUnknown



Category: Original Work, Tombstone (1993)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 15:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LedByTHeUnknown/pseuds/LedByTHeUnknown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny Ringo's reflection during his face off with Doc Holliday.  He recounts how He became the man he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiem for a Cowboy

**Author's Note:**

> This was a short story I wrote for a creative writing class in university. I take into account the movie Tombstone's depiction of Doc and Johnny. I also used what I could find on the internet pertaining to Johnny Ringo and his life.

Did I ever think that I would see myself as the villain? Did I ever think  my life  would come to this? How does a well-educated man such as I become so hated?  Doctor Holliday, may I call you Doc, or should I stick with lunger? How is your Tuberculosis? Ease that gun down let us not be hasty I will stick with Holliday, since you ain’t a doctor no more. Don’t you want to know who I really am, or do you not care? This ain’t a confession but at least let me explain a bit first. Let me try to figure this all out. How two educated men, contemporary’s, such as ourselves wind up on such different paths. History will tell the future about you, but I fear my story will be lost. How does a once promising soul wind up a hated outlaw?

Please just let me try to explain how I got started on my destructive path. Please let me just tell you the first moment it all went so terribly wrong.

 ****                                                                                 

     It was the twenty-ninth day of July in the Eighteen-hundred and sixty-eighth year of our Lord. The sun was high in the sky, at about mid-day. Druitt Campbell, Sly Lawrson, my cousin Wilbert Younger, and I were hiding in the tree line along the Old Santa Fe trail. It was just over a week ago that Druitt and Sly hatched this plan to rob the ten-thirty wagon out Independence Missouri. They said since our cousins back east had pulled enough bank jobs and train robberies to make the papers we would be naturals. Our cousins even had themselves a genuine name, The James Younger Gang. Had that nice ring to it like the Bummers Gang, meant they were official and that they were deserving of respect. The four of us were just as deserving but no we were all treated like good for nothing ranch hands. We all worked for Mr. Maddox out by Council Grove but no matter how hard we worked we were just hired help, trash in his eyes, just because by then we hardly had any money. Sure, my extended family had money but my mother had long since cut them off. She wanted nothing to do with them and them nothing to do with us. Maddox didn’t care that I knew Latin, then again up until six months ago you didn’t either. I learned it in the local church, which is also where I received my education, and where all our money went.

    After my daddy cut out, I was sent to live with the priests. I was six; my mother thought it would get me a career at least, since our fields did really seem to produce anymore. I had a very promising career in the church, I learned to speak and read Latin, learned my sums, and learned about the Bible. But when I was sixteen I met a girl in the church yard, and I ended up leaving the church.  I like the pleasures I could physically partake in better than the ones I could find spiritually.

     No immediate future and no money I soon found work at the Maddox ranch. Wilbert got me the job; he had already worked there two years. Two years of hard labor and he was still making less than most ranch hands. I couldn’t be picky though. Wilbert thought that with all my education I could be an accountant for the outfit. Naw that job belonged to Maddox’s Son Jeffery. I was given the lowest task of shoveling out the stalls. We worked there for two more years, never getting a raise; we barely made enough money to keep ourselves clothed, let alone take care of our families.

    

     Druitt overheard Jeffery talking to his pals about transporting the last year’s cattle sale profits from the Council Grove Bank to one in Santa Fe. Jeffery was taking the first step in his branching off to start his own outfit. Druitt told Sly and the two knew it was a perfect way to get back at Maddox, rob his son and strand him on the trail. Push the wagon into Kiowa territory and ride off to the west rich and ready for new opportunities.

    The ten-thirty from Council Grove Missouri to Santa Fe left every day at  precisely the listed time. It shuttled businessmen, families and even working girls, the owners didn’t care who you were as long as you paid. For the first part of the journey, it stayed close to the Arkansas River along what most known as the Mountain Route it kept them clear of the depths of Kiowa territory and close to water for the horses.  Closer to Taos in the Texas Territory, is where we set up our ambush, it followed the old cattle-driving trail that once housed hundreds of thousands of cattle that were steered from Independence to Santa Fe a thriving town along the Rio Grande.

      We had ridden out there three days ago, full on supplies and attitude. Early that morning Sly and Druitt went out to set the diversions leaving Wilbert and I to pack up camp. As I watched Wilbert, I could tell he was as nervous as I was. I went over and put my arm around his shoulders. I reassured him that everything would be fine. I told him that Sly and Druitt had it all planned out and by sundown we would be as rich and maybe one day as famous our cousins. He gave me a weak lopsided smile and just nodded. If I had known what was to come I  would have packed him and I up and ridden away from there as fast as our horses could handle.

     It was shortly after one when we heard the clanking of the carriage and the crunch of the wagon wheels in the dirt. Druitt had pulled a large branch in the way of the path and Sly had used rocks to block the sides of the trail so that the wagon driver could not drive around the log. The only way to move any further was to stop and physically move the log.

     As predicted, the Driver stopped and got down. And that was the first deviation from the plan. Druitt shot him.   That wasn’t part of the plan; we were just there for the money no one was supposed to die. We were robbers not killers. There was a big difference.  If I had learned anything from my years within the church is that one could come back from robbing someone but from murder… That was something altogether different.

     The man that was sitting with the driver was the next to die, Sly shot him. Then Sly and Druitt opened fire on the stagecoach, they shot it to pieces. Wilbert and I panicked we didn’t know what else to do so we fired too. By the time all the bullets in our main shotguns were spent, the door of the carriage was barely hanging onto its hinges. Sly nudged Wilbert’s forward told him to go snatch the money. Wilbert slowly approached the hanging door. He pulled it off and looked inside, went pale and turned to throw up. I looked in. Jeffery was not inside; instead, there were the bodies of a woman and her four children all dead. I was numb, I wanted to pray for their departing souls but no words would come to me. How could I pray for them when I was part of their death?

     I stepped away and went to check on Wilbert. I heard Druitt and Sly talking, they were still going to rob the bodies. I told them to stop to leave them be, but, they started to pull the bodies out and search for treasurers. I pulled Sly off the tiny body of what must have been the youngest child. He pulled back his arm and punched me. I pushed him and he drew his personal gun, I drew mine. Druitt and Wilbert just stood silent, not sure what to do. Sly made a move as if to come at me and I fired. Sly stumbled forward the blood tricking down his forehead from the small hole in above his left eye.

     It was awful, in the dime store novels I bought as a kid the bad guys always fell down dead when shot, especially in the head. But Sly didn’t die right away, his body stumbled forward and he made this weird choking noise as if his mouth couldn’t work.  The three of us just stood there and watched as his legs gave out and he pitched face first into the dirt still sputtering. Then all noise stopped and it was just complete silence. Wilbert and Druitt looked at me; I instinctively aimed my gun at Druitt. I told him to drop the bag he was holding that he was going to get on his horse ride back to Council Grove, beg Mr. Maddox to give him his job back and work for a living.

     He did he rode his horse and had Sly’s horse following behind him. Wilbert just looked at me. He wanted to know what we should do. I told him that there was no way we could trust Druitt to not go to the sheriff and pin everything on us. He had to get on his horse and ride for our cousin James Younger’s house in Independence, James would know what to do. He was upset that I was not going with him, but I had to think things though, I told myself I was going to go and try to find penance.

     We rode together as far as Taos. He took the lower trail route back to Independence while I headed south to the Texas Territory Mexico border.

 

****

     I never did find my penance. I took to riding with Scott Cooley and before long we were involved in that Hoodoo War in Mason County. Somehow, from there I met up with Frank Stillwell and Ike Clanton. We met up with Curly Bill and I started wearing this red sash as part of the cowboys.   We had a pretty good life for ourselves here in Cochise County till you and your friends the Earps came along. Now what do we have, nothing. You and Wyatt, you’re heroes cleaning up the county, but who’s to say you are on the right side of the law. Sure you’re wearing a badge, so am I. But who’s to say you’re better just because mine says Deputy and yours says Marshall.  The higher the law the better you are. I don’t believe it, this little rampage you and Wyatt have been on, all the killing. You and your gang are no better than me and mine.  Your leader can’t even show up to my invitation instead he sends a sickly lunger like yourself. How long you think you got Holliday, huh, till the Tuberculosis takes you? Not long now, right, you can feel it stripping away your lungs.   Don’t give me that crap about you and I starting a game for blood. I was drunk that day. You and yours had killed three perfectly innocent men in blood. They were doing nothing wrong. So they had their guns in town, so what? Now what are you going to do?

  ****

     So you shoot me and leave me to rot in the woods. A bullet in my head just above my left eye, how fitting.  I still haven’t found my penance, I am not in heaven or hell, I just wander the world lost. And where are you Holliday, huh, you go down in history as a hero. You were no better than I. If I had your life and you had mine, would I have still be stranded here in purgatory?


End file.
